Oh Deer

  The snow had finally melted, and the tasty albeit dead grass and weeds had returned. All that stood between me and a patch of especially delectable vegetation was a strip of the Hardrock, where the Creatures rushed by. Or, as some called them, the Moonrockbears. They were different from the wolves; the wolves killed and ate you. The Moonrockbears hit you and left you. They left your body to rot, or be picked at by whatever scavenger brave enough to stand on the Hardrock Paths. Legend has it that they're so spiteful of the other creatures that they stick to their paths and feed the carrions just so us creatures keep living and reproducing so there's more for them to kill. Others say that the creatures of the Hardrock Paths are spirits of forest creatures who die, driving on the path to the Peaceful Fields in their own indestructible, immortal forms. This fits with the Hardrock, a material clearly supernatural and indestructible, never carved with our footprints or any other interference that touches normal soil.
  The Hardrock, as always, feels funny on my hooves as I cross the road. The dirt, grass, and snow reciprocate. You push them further down, and they push back on you. Hardrock, on the other hand, meets you full stop. It doesn't even grant you an illusion of Newtonian equality. You push, but it doesn't affect them at all. It is always pushing so hard back at you that it developed armour and can't be pushed at all, as a flexed muscle grows and skin that is beat in calluses.
  The Hardrock road was quiet and dark. This Path was winding and confusing, neverending and vast. But mere moments after I began my crossing of the Hardrock Paths, one of them appeared. A Spirit had turned the winding path, and I was next in its route. Its bright, yellow glowing eyes faced me and the Spirit's growls penetrated my ears. They never stop growling as they aggressively make their way down their eternal Hardrock journey into their paradise.
  I tried to convince myself of many things. Initially, I wanted to believe I was in no present danger. I wanted to believe I could outrun it. I wanted to believe this was a bad dream. Alas, it was not. It was much too real, much too fast, and much too close. The spirits move strangely, and with impossible forces and speeds. This one was no exception; even going faster than usual spirits I had seen.
  But my self-convincing just turned to questioning. Why, why had this spirit chosen me? Why had it erupted from nothingness to attack me? Singled me out, an innocent deer in the night, of barely a full season-cycle old? Was it the bugs of the fields I had trampled, the grasses I had eaten? The ticks and mosquitoes I had somehow starved by brushing them off while they tried to eat me? Those vengeful vermins, I bet this is one of them in their new spirit form taking the opportunity to take me with them. I could probably flip this spirit, charge it with my newly-grown antlers. Go out kicking and ramming.
  But spirits always move on. No matter how badly it's damaged by the creature it hits, it will be moved eventually. This spirit can kill me, and I cannot kill it. The rules of spirits are unfair.
  Oh, Spirits. Must today be my day? Is there nothing I can offer you? I will watch my every step, never trampling another beetle or spider. I will eat only what I need, and what is already dead. I will let myself fester with ticks and horse flies and mosquitoes, and let them share with me my flesh and blood. Oh, Spirits, I call out to thee, anything I could give, anything to save my life!
  But the spirit did not stop. Oh, woe is me. If only my thoughts had not entered this stasis, if only I could have died without this contemplating, rather than continue living this second that has lasted an eternity. I'll die alone on this spiritually haunted path of Hardrock, never having had a mate and fulfilling my programmed purpose as a deer. I'll die here, and for what? So that flies and crows and coyotes can pick at my rotting, foul corpse?
  But I thought for a while.
  Maybe this was my spiritual redemption. If these beings of the Paths are truly the spirits of the forest and of the dead, maybe this is a sign. Less than a second ago I was apologizing, begging for forgiveness for trampling bugs. Well, bugs can now eat my corpse. Perhaps I am just a bug to this spirit, ready to be trampled. I would die and become a spirit like this one. In truth, I took pity on this spirit. Perhaps they kill us on their Paths because they're jealous we hadn't yet died. Many spirits passed without harming any creature of the forest. Some spirits even stopped to allow us passage. When I die, an event to occur very soon, I won't spitefully strike at anyone as this poor soul has, I'll let any passing creature live and continue on, for I now know how they would feel.
  I suppose this is it.
  The spirit rammed into me with its hard, coldly unforgiving shell. I was thrown back, but it kept moving. The spirit crushed my chest and legs, and it just missed my head so I was left very well and alive. Well, perhaps not very well, but reasonably alive for the time being, considering what I had just gone through.
  I didn't feel anything in those brief moments, I just heard the snaps, rips, and cracks that rippled through my body.
  The Spirit moved past me, stopped for a moment, almost like it was as shocked as me, and continued.
  "I wish you luck on your way, Spirit," I wheezed after the fleeing spirit.
  That's when the pain hit me. My chest seared , and I couldn't feel or move my back legs at all. Every breath hurt like being stabbed with flames.
  I'm cold, I realized.
  I'm tired, I realized.
  I'm dizzy, too.
  Maybe if I go to sleep, I'll wake up a spirit and I can carelessly sprint down the paths to the eternally Peaceful Fields. So I closed my eyes, and let  the comforting darkness of sleep envelop me.
  But I didn't wake up a spirit on the Hardrock Path. I stayed in that final, hopeful, dark, sleepy, and unknowing field of black forever.
  But, in the end, I guess that's okay. No way to change it now, and nothing feels better than a good night's rest.